Government may need to consider refining its wish list of major infrastructure projects to make sure that people can afford to pay for them, particularly if many are to be privately financed, the National Audit Office has warned.

NAO also says that infrastructure seen as vital now may not be needed in the long term and could be a waste of money. The report coincides with an open letter to Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin from transport planning academics saying a coherent passenger and freight policy is needed before major decisions are taken.

In its report “Planning for economic infrastructure” the NAO highlighted that 64% of the £310Bn of projects in the current National Infrastructure Plan are intended to be privately financed “with the burden of financing likely to shift towards the public as consumers rather than taxpayers”.

“There is the possibility of a failure to take into account the cumulative impact on consumers of funding those infrastructure projects where the costs are recovered by charging users,” it said. “The full impact of spending on economic infrastructure in the years ahead is unclear. While there is information on individual sectors, no overall assessment has been undertaken by the Government.”

NAO said that Government may need “to refine prioritisation of infrastructure programmes and projects” possibly targeting its efforts “more narrowly on projects of the highest priority”.

NAO was also concerned that forecasters may get wrong the need for infrastructure in the long term. “Departments should subject their demand forecasts underpinning infrastructure plans to rigorous testing of sensitivity to alternative realistic assumptions,” its report said.

The letter to the Transport Secretary from 32 academics under the aegis of the Transport Planning Society and Royal Town Planning Institute suggested forecasts needed to be reconsidered in the light of signs that road traffic growth is levelling off.

The group also queried the assumption that all transport infrastructure investment stimulates growth and said that Britain’s cities are not equipped to take the further growth in road traffic that would be generated by expansion of the strategic road network.

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